


Perfect Distortion

by DroppedBear



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Gen, ITS HALLOWEEN, chaos; lots of chaos, originally a zombie apocalypse fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27301759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DroppedBear/pseuds/DroppedBear
Summary: Since the dawn of creation, she has been shackled to the netherworld. Her domain was nothing but eternal darkness where spirits clung onto existence. She watched, biding her time and now she desired freedom. But freedom has a cost. Her absence caused her thrall to fall into chaos, as the spirits now reigned havoc throughout the world. Will her freedom become her undoing?
Kudos: 7





	Perfect Distortion

**Author's Note:**

> Hi y'all,
> 
> I'm back with a new story, co-written with Drapion23. It's also posted on ff.net.
> 
> Please enjoy.
> 
> I first started planning this as a zombie apocalypse story, but someone at the time mentioned ghosts and this is the end result.

The distortion world.

A twisted dimension filled with scraps of land that were bound together by the mere disassociation of the laws of physics. Time flowed like a gentle wind and a streaking comet, at the same time. An eerie bluish purple haze hung throughout the landscape, steadily churning as though a storm was always on the horizon. Random pockets of water caused long, tall waterfalls to fall from above, and when there was nowhere left to go, the water simply travelled back up.

Wind blew at supersonic speeds that could knock oneself off their feet if not for the staggering gravity that was tantamount to that of a singularity in some places. Snow and rain drifted across the land and fell from non-existent clouds. Explanation was not a part of the distortion world, only arbitrary conception.

It was a land that no creature inhabited, a land that no creature _could_ inhabit. Nothing could survive in the hellscape that was the distortion world.

And yet, the infinite wasteland was home to one single organism.

Her name was Giratina. A large, ghostly dragon whose stare could break down even the most hardened of creatures. She ruled this land.

The land that was hers, and hers alone.

She was the one, the balance, needed for the 'other' world to survive. One could not have order without disorder. He, Arceus, was the order. And she was the disorder. It had been her duty to maintain her presence here to ensure that the distortion world didn't bleed out into Arceus' world and cause disruption.

But over the millenia, as she swept through her domain, never batting an eye when her wings brushed against an island and causing it to cut in half or be sent away at the speed of light, her thoughts had begun to consume her. Thoughts of greed and envy that increasingly plagued her mind every second. She deserved more. So much more. Arceus had his own world with life that sprung to praise him at almost every fleeting moment. What did she have? A broken world and no one who gave her positive notice save for detested cultists in a world that wasn't hers. It wasn't fair, anyone could see that.

And she had a plan to take what was hers.

Although she was the only full, corporeal being here, there was the presence of others. The ones that had a slight inkling of her own power. The ones who had almost let their grip on Arceus' world slip away.

The ghost pokemon.

The link between Giratina and them was weak, almost negligible. But it _was_ there. And the bond she felt strengthened and weakened as she passed through the distortion world, but never disappeared completely. At its strongest points, she could even reach out with her own spirit and brush against them.

But she didn't dare to try and sway them yet. Any attempt to slowly ease them onto her side would cause the beings on Arceus' world, the 'humans', to become aware of her tampering. That would not do. As inferior to her as they were, humans could be cunning at times.

Her attack had to be a blitz; sudden and merciless. She would prepare, collect energy and then break out of this world. She would then release all of her pent up energy in a tsunami of chaotic influence that would affect all the ghost pokemon. But then she would need to rest, recover from her outburst, and let the mayhem discombobulate the humans from trying to find the problem and fix it. After that, she would wreak havoc and take what was hers.

It would work. No one will expect this. Not the humans, not Arceus, no one.

As she flew through her realm, one of her wings brushed over the presence of a ghost pokemon. Although the concept of temperature was nothing more than a word in the distortion world, she always felt a bit of warmth run through her body whenever she felt their presence. The feeling of someone giving you a bit of notice after going so long without it.

"Soon," she whispered, in a voice both calm and authoritative, "Soon I will be with you. I will be with you all. And it will be our world."

And like that, she passed by the spot and the warmth disappeared. Slightly disappointed, she continued flying on her way. She needed to return to her resting place and gain the energy needed. How much energy she required to influence them all was unknown to her. It may take days, months, or even years. But it would be worth it. 

She would get what she deserved.

* * *

It wasn't everyday that a notable gym leader like herself was able to get a couple weeks off for a vacation. The job of a Gym Leader was tough, brutal, and unforgiving. Between accepting challenges from strong and weak trainers alike, going to city council meetings and dealing with the morons who ran it, aiding the police department in dealing the sudden surge in the illegal sale of slowpoke tails on the black market, and the mountains of paperwork, a Gym Leader had little or no free time on his or her hands. They were meant to serve the people and it was the people they serve no matter how thankless some of them were.

But now, here on the Sea Mauville (formerly known as the SS Cactus, thank god for that name change) as they crossed Route 108, Roxanne felt free. She was currently reclining on one of those foldable pool benches in a yellow bikini as she felt the fresh sea breeze flow over her body. In her right hand stood a glass of lemonade while her left hand rubbed the ears of her loyal lycanroc who sat beside her.

In front of her was a pool, full of people, young and old alike. Kids splashed carefree alongside their parents as four lifeguards looked out into the pool. Various small water pokemon ranging from common pokemon like horsea, poliwhirl and corphish to rarer water types like her beautiful kabuto settled into the warm water with smiles on their faces. It was a truly peaceful scene and Roxanne couldn't help but feel satisfaction at the idea that she would be on this ship for another month. The Devon Corporation had really outdone themselves in treating Roxanne to such a luxurious vacation as a gesture of thanks to all she had done for the city.

Roxanne snorted at that reasoning as she recalled it. The only reason they had offered it to her was because she had been willing to sell the rights of her synthetic variety of moss rocks to the powerful corporation. With some tweaking, it was definitely possible for the Devon Corporation to build off her research and make the synthetic moss rock into what was essentially an evolutionary stone that could be sold at high prices for trainers who desired to evolve their Eevees without going into the treacherous jungles that surrounded Fortree City or the bug-infested woods of Petalburg.

The new evolutionary stone would likely spark a wave of scientific advancement as scientists would race to see if they could make a synthetic version of a dragon scale, king's rocks and whatever weird environmental phenomenon that allowed inkay to evolve.

In the meantime, Roxanne would be replicating her achievements with a sample of the Ice Rock which her dear friend Candace had sent from Snowpoint City. But that was for another time.

Right now, Roxanne was content to relax peacefully on her foldable bench as she looked into the horizon. Her gaze shifted leftwards towards her large bags that sat nearby, guarded by her probopass and her golem who looked shiftily at the pool as if fearing that someone would push her into it.

Roxanne couldn't help snorting at the idea. She doubted that any of the pokemon on this ship, bar that one poliwrath, would be willing and able to push her golem into the pool.

As her gaze shifted, she took note of her bags which contained various rock samples from all over Hoenn. She would've kept them in her room but she had decided to take them with her in case some of her younger pokemon desired to play with the rocks. Unfortunately for her golem who had lugged the bags onto the pool deck, her geodude, aron and roggenrola were all snoozing comfortably nearby.

That was all there was in the bags. Rocks, rocks, some body lotions, a large black doll and more rocks.

 _"A large black doll_ ," she couldn't help but muse in her mind. Roxanne's eyes widened in shock as she shifted her gaze back to her luggage. On top of her bags was a menacing looking black doll with a zipper for a mouth, its eyes closed in a state of sleep.

 _It's just a banette_ , she thought, as she turned her eyes away. It was clear to her that the banette belonged to one of the other trainers on the ship and just decided to take a nap amongst the rocks. She hadn't abused any dolls as a child so she knew she didn't have to worry about a rogue banette hunting her down.

Unfortunately for Roxanne, the minute her eyes moved back onto the banette, the ghost type's eyes had opened up. The ghost let out a deep cackle as its red eye flared out with malicious intent.

Roxanne couldn't help but fall out of her folding chair in shock at the sudden display of aggression. Her glass of lemonade was on the floor of the pool deck, broken, as she stood back up, ready to give the banette a piece of her mind.

Her golem had reacted immediately. Instantly, after seeing his trainer fall, the golem turned on the banette and tossed it overboard and into the ocean using an overpowered rock blast, the move likely knocking out the ghost type.

Roxanne was about to express thanks to her loyal pokemon when she heard a loud scream of terror, the kind of scream that one makes right before their imminent death. Whirling around, Roxanne caught sight of one of the boys that had been in the pool, he couldn't have been older than nine, being swallowed up by a dark, gaping mouth. Moving her eyes up and away from the half-consumed body of the young boy, she saw the pulsing red eye of Hoenn's reaper, the mighty dusknoir.

In only a few milliseconds, Roxanne's mind moved from focusing on her feelings of utter shock to pure fury to a cold, calculation as she ordered her team to take down the powerful reaper.

The child's body had already entered the event horizon of the dusknoir's mouth, spaghettified by the intense gravity of the tiny, primordial black hole that existed beyond the dimensional tear that was the dusknoir's mouth, one that was akin to the black holes formed during the immediate aftermath of the Big Bang. The child was dead. It was too late for him.

But it wasn't too late for the others.

Immediately, her probopass reacted with utter precision as it let out a powerful flash cannon that hit the dusknoir's red cyclopic eye head on. The grim reaper froze in shock at the utter power of the critical hit before collapsing onto the floor of the pool deck unconscious and vanishing into black smoke.

What followed was pure, unadulterated chaos.

Screams sounded across the ship as a wave of darkness seemed to engulf the ships. Blurs of shadows could be seen whipping across the sky, covering the bright yellow sun, as Hoenn's fearsome ghosts ravaged the inhabitants of the ship.

Immediately, Roxanne had her entire team out. She had to save them all.

But it was a ship, a ship that wasn't meant to withstand a horde of ghost pokemon that came out of nowhere. Even as Roxanne commanded her team to protect the innocent civilians that had chosen to vacation at the worst time, a team of froslass worked to freeze the ship in place. The sudden freezing of the water outside of the ship and within the frame of the ship led to a horrible screeching sound as the frozen water expanded, damaging the frame and causing the ship to start to collapse.

Even as trainers jumped into the once warm waters of Route 108 with their water types or tried to fly away, they were quickly and brutally torn to pieces by the ferocious ghosts that floated around the ship.

It was a death trap to say the least.

Banette, dusknoir, froslass and shedinja swarmed the ship. Sableye were transported to the location via shadow sneak by the dusknoir and joined into the fray with glee, taking the eyes of children and mockingly eating them in front of their parents. Those parents would be dead moments later.

There was no escape from the ship as its frame creaked and groaned under the intense pressure generated by the expansion of ice within it.

Roxanne fought bravely using her team to slaughter any ghosts that came close to her, but there were just too many and they were inhibited by the lack of land nearby. Soon, their stockpile of rocks ran out and they were forced to rely on other techniques that wouldn't sink the ship in the process.

The first to fall was Roxanne's powerful cradily. Despite its powerful appendages which whirled and smacked ghosts out of the sky, its anatomy prevented it from moving around and dodging potentially fatal attacks. Its roots dug into the ground, the cradily was eventually smote by a powerful ice beam courtesy of a froslass.

Roxanne's team fought hard. Her probopass, aggron, armaldo and rhyperior all fell to the constant barrage of ghost type attack. Blood pooled at the feet of Roxanne from the neck of her golem whose exsanguination was courtesy of a vicious sableye.

Roxanne found herself and the few pokemon that remained on her team being pushed towards the interior of the ship. There was no escape from the ship and Roxanne couldn't help but feel her heart grow heavy at the realization that she would likely die.

"No," Roxanne whispered as she saw her lycanroc consumed by a dusknoir who had phased through the walls. "Not like this."

Roxanne stood with her back to the wall as her last two teammates, magcargo and her other golem, stood by her side. Her kabuto, aron, roggenrola and geodude were still in their pokeballs. She wouldn't let them die such a brutal death. She would have done the same to her magcargo and golem, but they refused to leave her side. As much as she hated it, she couldn't help but love them for it. She wouldn't die alone. Her four baby pokemon would survive this and be rescued in the aftermath of this tragedy.

Roxanne was warped from her thoughts as her body emanated with pain. Looking downwards, she saw a bloodied, wispy hand emerge from her chest.

She collapsed on the floor, her blood pooling on the ground, as her golem and magcargo screamed in anger and despair.

The magcargo's body started to emanate with heat as she prepared to melt the ship's floor into a molten state. However, the golem stopped her from doing it. The younger ones would die if she did that.

Resigned to their fate, the magcargo and golem fought on before they too entered a deep sleep, never to wake up again.

The four younger pokemon joined them shortly after. The ghosts showed no mercy, had no capacity to even feel mercy as they giggled about in a dream-like state while pushing enough ghostly energy into the pokeballs to fry the electronics, killing the pokemon within. They were high, high off the ghostly energy that had started to penetrate the world around them.

Then they left, blood on their hands as they fled the scene of the crime to continue their reign of terror onto the souls of the living.

In each and every one of their ghostly and distorted minds, there was only one singular thought.

Giratina was coming.

And now, the once mighty ship was now at the bottom of the ocean, destined to be forgotten in the utter waves of chaos and distortion that were to follow in its wake. It was destined to lie rusted on the bottom floor with the bodies of all of the people and pokemon that were on the ship.

No one had survived the catastrophe of the Abandoned Ship.

No one lived to warn the people of Hoenn about what was to come.

* * *

_The wind whistled around the lonely headstone._

_The caw of a honchkrow echoing faintly in the distance._

_The trees swayed gently in the breeze as they shadowed the marked grave that held a beloved child of Sinnoh._

_The words on the cold black stone were written with beautiful cursive gold. The date of death was left blank, as if not even Fate herself could bring about the man's death._

_Here Lies_

_Marcus Jiāshū Reiner_

_14/07/4473 HC –_

_一句話 一輩子 一生情 一杯酒_

_The world is never out of our reach_

_There were no weeds around the grave, the entire clearing clean and meticulously tended to. But there was a heavy sorrow lingering in the air even when there wasn't a single soul about, a sombre hush that refused to leave, telling the tale of anguished tears and heart-stopping grief, of those who mourned the passing of a man who would walk the earth no more, of friends and family who would never recover from the crippling blow dealt to them by the death of a greatly cherished leader and friend._

"Marcus?" Sabrina shook her husband lightly. It was rare for the blond to stay asleep when someone was nearby these days, much less when his name was being called. They lived in dangerous times. "Marcus, wake up. _Now."_

Marcus jolted awake, head jerking up as he took in his surroundings with wild unseeing eyes still glazed and haunted with skulking nightmares. Sabrina didn't let go, squeezing the panic-taut line of the blond's shoulder as she voiced sharply, "Marcus, it's just a dream. It's not real. _Wake up."_

She waited as grey eyes gradually focused on the present again, realization of his surroundings finally piercing through whatever vision that had been haunting the pale blond-haired man.

"What did you see?" Sabrina asked softly.

_"Weep," The wind sighed with desolate despair. "Weep, for this is the legacy left behind by a brilliant man."_

Marcus thought back to the final warning he was shown and slid his gaze to meet Sabrina's. "If I died… promise me you'd take care of yourself, Tristan and Faye."

"That's not going to happen." She stated flatly.

Marcus only smiled. Quiet, all-knowing and so unexpectedly old that it sent a shard of ice straight into her heart.

She knew that smile. She'd personally seen it on her grandfather – in the months leading up to his death – all those decades ago, an expression that hinted at a wisdom borne from seeing things none of them, not her grandmother, not her _parents,_ had ever been able to see. And she wondered, _when_ had he gained the ability to see the future.

 _"Promise_ me," Marcus repeated.

Sabrina placed her hand into his larger, calloused one and winced at the coldness she felt. Marcus gripped it tightly, as if reassuring her. But she knew him, and she knew he'd never show how much he was hurting in front of family. She also knew no amount of pleading would change his mind once he had it set.

So she simply nodded. "I promise."

* * *

This is the cover art intended. Credited to DianiteWolf

**Author's Note:**

> 一句話 一輩子 一生情 一杯酒 – this translates to "one sentence, one life; a lifetime love, one cup of wine", it comes from the song 朋友 "Pengyou" (Friend) by Emil Chau.
> 
> The world is never out of our reach – also lyrics from a song, Ripcord by Jason Zhang.
> 
> Please leave a review on the way out.


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